Panelist Jasmine Crighton said a lot of political rhetoric portrays reporters as being the bad guys and that their stories are full of lies. She said that seems to play well with audiences even though reporters are fact checkers.

Panelist Jonathan Ahl said political events are becoming more staged. As that happens, reporters are being granted less access. He said citizens are also being given fewer chances to interact with candidates as rallies become more carefully staged.

Ahl said perhaps reporters should stop covering political events and instead spend more time digging into the claims made by candidates. But Crighton pointed out this year’s rallies have been good for TV ratings so it is unlikely news directors will stop sending crews to cover them.

Panelist Rich Egger said people in power portray journalists as being bad guys because they don’t want anyone checking on them.

Egger also said TSPR Southeast Iowa Bureau Chief Jason Parrott noted before the Iowa caucuses that the candidates with the best poll numbers were the least likely to take questions from local reporters.

Related Content

Radio and television coverage of courtrooms will continue in Illinois. Illinois Public Radio's Brian Mackey reported that the state Supreme Court is satisfied with a four-year test of electronic media coverage of the state's trial courts.

A recent article in the New Yorker profiled the founder of TMZ, the organization that reports on celebrity gossip and entertainment news. TMZ sometimes breaks stories that are of interest to a wider audience, which got the Shop Talk panelists discussing the quality of its work.

A Missouri House committee discussed a bill that would reinforce first amendment rights for student journalists. St Louis Public Radio's statehouse bureau reported the bill, which is called the Walter Cronkite New Voices Act, would require public schools and universities to grant student journalists the same degree of free speech they would to a professional journalist.

Shop Talk panelist Jasmine Crighton said a student in one of her classes acknowledged mixing into a story a piece of sound that was not recorded at the scene. That is sometimes referred to "unnatural sound."

The Center for Public Integrity has released the results of what it calls, “a data-driven assessment of state laws and practices that are meant to deter corruption while promoting transparency and accountability.”